Westmount synagogue to welcome first of 2 Syrian families

Separated by the war in Syria, two brothers and their families are set to reunite in Montreal on Monday, thanks to a synagogue in Westmount.

Catherine Solyom, Montreal Gazette

Updated: February 24, 2017

MONTREAL, QUE.: FEBRUARY 23, 2017 -- Movers Andrew Norton carries furniture and household goods as he moves articles to a storage facility in Nun's Island from the Temple Emanu-el-Beth Sholom on Thursday February 23, 2017. The furnishings are part of the $70,000 raised by the synagogue to help sponsor 2 Syrian families. The first family will arrive in Montreal from Jordan on Monday. (Pierre Obendrauf / MONTREAL GAZETTE) ORG XMIT: 58175 - 9169 Pierre Obendrauf / Montreal Gazette

Not long after protests turned into civil war in Syria in early 2012, Adnan and his brother were forced to go their separate ways.

Adnan, at the forefront of anti-government protests in Daraa, was arrested and imprisoned for six months in one of Bashar Assad’s notorious jails for dissidents.

Fearing the same, his brother, a pharmacist who dared to help the injured, fled to Jordan with his wife and four children the very next day.

Five years later, the brothers and their families are set to reunite in Montreal on Monday.

“You can’t imagine how important this is for us,” says Adnan, 41, who eventually left Syria and came to Montreal in 2014 as a fellow at McGill’s School of Social Work. “We’re almost twins … To live together as we did as children in Syria — it’s something that might help us heal from everything we’ve been through.”

But the brothers’ reunification, coming at a time when Quebec’s social fabric is fraying at the edges, also marks the culmination of efforts by a synagogue with its own experience of refugees, to unite two families and possibly two faiths.

A mitzvah for refugees

Back in September 2015, with the images of a Syrian toddler washed up on a beach in Turkey still fresh in their minds, Rabbi Lisa Grushcow used her annual Rosh Hashanah sermon to appeal to congregants at Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom to contribute to a fund to sponsor a Syrian family.

By Yom Kippur, nine days later, the synagogue had raised $40,000, Grushcow said. At the end of the month, the total was close to $70,000 — enough to sponsor two families.

The response was overwhelming, said the rabbi — but not all that surprising.

“We know what it is to be refugees and have doors close, and have lives lost because of it, and we take it seriously,” Grushcow said. “There’s a religious, ethical, and historical imperative — we couldn’t stand by and do nothing.”

One of the members of the Temple spent six months on a Greek steamboat, trying to escape the Holocaust.

Another member’s grandfather came to Canada in the early 20th century, fleeing pogroms in Poland. He had to leave his sister behind.

And the congregation had sponsored Vietnamese boat people in the 1970s — the family became part of the synagogue’s history and the synagogue became part of theirs, Grushcow said.

Other synagogues across Canada — like churches and mosques — have made similar efforts. Dorshei Emet in Hampstead welcomed this week the first of four Syrian families it is sponsoring.

In Toronto, a mosque and a synagogue, which previously shared only a parking lot, have teamed up to sponsor a refugee family. And in London, England, a synagogue is trying to raise money to convert one of its religious studies rooms into a two-bedroom apartment to house a family of Syrian refugees.

By the same token, Muslims have stepped up to help Jewish communities, Grushcow said. When a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis was desecrated this week, for example, the Muslim community raised $55,000 in a single day to repair more than 100 headstones.

“As Jews we really know that the wheel of fortune turns — sometimes you’re able to help others, sometimes you’re in need of help,” Grushcow said. ‘What we’re doing feels small in terms of the scope of the tragedy of the (Syrian) war, but I’m very proud of our community.”

Some 1o million Syrians have been displaced by the war — more than four million to other countries. Many schools have been destroyed or occupied by military or rebel forces. And estimates of civilians killed in almost six years of fighting range from 200,000 to 470,000.

Grushcow said from the beginning the idea was to help Syrian families — be they Christian or Muslim. (There are no longer any Jewish families left in Syria, she said.)

“The only question that was relevant to us, was what does our religion tell us to do?” she said. “It tells us to help people who need help.”

But if the synagogue’s actions can also bridge a divide in Montreal, between two communities who don’t necessarily have a natural connection through language or location or religion — all the better, she said.

“To be able to cross those differences in a shared project is very meaningful,” said Grushcow. “It’s what our vision of the city and the country should be about.”

The long wait ends Monday After raising $70,000 for the families, the congregation has waited 18 long months at Adnan’s side for his brother and his family to arrive.

Immigration lawyers in the congregation helped with the sponsorship paperwork. Volunteers collected furniture and clothing, so everyone will have boots and winter clothing waiting for them at the airport on Monday.

The children have written welcome cards — in Arabic, French and English. Others have donated gift cards — for Pharmaprix and Walmart — so the families can choose things for themselves when they get here. One 13-year-old boy asked guests at his bar mitzvah to donate for the refugees. Another congregant has donated new backpacks for the children filled with school supplies.

The second sponsored family, with five children age eight to 18, is expected to arrive March 9.

Adnan’s brother’s children, ages 18, 17, 13 and 7, have not been able to go to school since they left Syria more than four years ago.

In Jordan, his brother sometimes worked under the table, at risk of being deported, Adnan said — he didn’t want his last name published to protect his brother’s identity while he is still abroad.

“It’s been very stressful for them,” said Adnan. “There’s so much uncertainty, you feel you’re going to start a new life but you don’t know when.”

But the time has allowed Adnan to get to know the congregation, and vice versa.

“Back in Syria I couldn’t imagine even meeting Jewish people or attending a synagogue or meeting people who have different beliefs,” he said. “But since I came here my view has opened, and I know more about other cultures and religions and nations. You know because of the Syrian crisis for the first time we felt what happened in WWII and the Holocaust — we started to feel it as a human being.”

He sensed the same solidarity — this time with Muslims — after the attack on a mosque in Quebec City. “Unfortunately you always need victims to remind us about our humanity.”

As the arrival date approaches, Grushcow and other volunteers are frantically working on the last piece of the puzzle: to find apartments for the two families, where they can be close to their relatives — Adnan and his four children in N.D.G., and the second family in Ahuntsic.

But on Monday, Adnan’s brother’s family will come home with him — to a feast of halal and kosher food.

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